Unionizing Retail: Lessons From Young Women's Grassroots Organizing in the Greater Toronto Area in the 1990s

Introduction

Unionization in the retail sector is not well researched or understood and the work of everyday organizing in retail sites is rarely discussed. This is surprising since the most common occupation for both women and men in Canada is now retail salesperson/clerk.¹ Furthermore, retail work continues to be characterized by low wages, few, if any, benefits and job insecurity. Despite these conditions and the rapid growth of retail work as an area of employment, this sector remains one of the most unorganized in the Canadian labour force. In 2009, 29.5 per cent of Canadian workers were represented by a union but only about twelve per cent of retail workers were union members.² Within the retail sector, unionized workers are concentrated in food retail/grocery and warehouse work.³

As a contribution to the larger project of understanding the challenges and possibilities of organizing retail workers, I examine two retail unionization drives in the Greater Toronto area in the 1990s which were led by young women. During this period of neoliberal capitalism, material and ideological attacks on labour unions and working-class livelihoods and identities were widespread. However, unionization continued to appeal to many workers who saw their well-being as inextricably tied to the pursuit of collective rights. Even some who had no experience with unions, and who did not have a long or strong history of working-class consciousness, chose to organize. This in an exploration of two such cases, and of the relationships among material conditions, political consciousness, and collective praxis.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews I conducted with Wynne Hartviksen and Debora De Angelis, the two women who led the organizing drives being considered, and informed by a close reading of the mainstream and labour media coverage of their efforts, I chart the commencement, progression, and resolution of both unionization efforts. I then move to an analysis of what these cases reveal about organizing in the retail sector, assessing the similarities and differences between the two drives. In particular, I seek to identify what factors contributed to these successful drives.

I also propose avenues for future research that would build towards a better understanding of retail workers' political consciousness, labour, and lives. Such research must form part of a broader scholarly and political project to improve the lives of retail workers and reduce economic inequality, a task made more pressing as gendered and racialized precarious work increases within and across de-industrializing capitalist contexts.⁴

From a Joke to a Collective Agreement: Organizing Young Workers in Street-Front Retail

Although Wynne Hartviksen, currently Executive Assistant to the President of the Ontario Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (cupe), has held leadership positions in local, provincial, national, and international unions and organized workplaces of all sizes, she still sees organizing a chain of futon stores in her early twenties as one of her greatest accomplishments. It was the galvanizing experience that ignited her union consciousness.

While studying English at the University of Toronto in the early 1990s, Hartviksen worked for both the student newspaper and a small chain of street front futon stores which had locations along busy thoroughfares across the city. She found the job at the futon store through a friend and quickly came to recognize the work force as largely "a community of friends."⁵ She and her co-workers earned the minimum wage and certain minimal benefits were co-funded by the employer and the workers. Because the boss would arbitrarily fire people with little or no warning, job security was an important issue for the workers, most of whom were women in their twenties working part-time hours at various locations. Working in street-front stores, many of the staff, especially women, also had concerns about personal safety, particularly when forced to work alone. They felt their employer did little to address these safety issues.

In her interview with me, Hartviksen explained how these concerns turned into a decision to unionize. When the employer unexpectedly fired a well-liked, full...